Karikó (left) and
Weissman (right) "for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19"
The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to
Katalin Karikó (born 1955) and
Drew Weissman (born 1959) "for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective
mRNA vaccines against
COVID-19".[2][3]
Katalin Karikó was born on January 17, 1955, in
Szolnok, Hungary.[4] From the
University of Szeged, she received a
Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1982.[5] From 2013 to 2022, she was associated with BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals, first as a vice president and promoted to senior vice president in 2019. This company, a division of
BioNTech, commercialized mRNA vaccines at a global scale.
Karikó, K., Buckstein, M., Ni, H. and Weissman, D.Suppression of RNA Recognition by Toll-like Receptors: The impact of nucleoside modification and the evolutionary origin of RNA. Immunity 23, 165–175 (2005).
Karikó, K., Muramatsu, H., Welsh, F.A., Ludwig, J., Kato, H., Akira, S. and Weissman, D.Incorporation of pseudouridine into mRNA yields superior nonimmunogenic vector with increased translational capacity and biological stability. Mol Ther 16, 1833–1840 (2008).
Anderson, B.R., Muramatsu, H., Nallagatla, S.R., Bevilacqua, P.C., Sansing, L.H., Weissman, D. and Karikó, K.Incorporation of pseudouridine into mRNA enhances translation by diminishing PKR activation. Nucleic Acids Res. 38, 5884–5892 (2010).